Hi Kurt,

Yeah, it's apparently the same machine, internally, with a slightly modified exterior shell. Further snooping at the Ridgid site reveals the warranty to, in fact, be as you stated. 90 days no questions asked return or exchange and lifetime repair if purchased by the ned of the year. WOW!

Interestingly enough, this is also on the warranty notice: "This product is manufactured by One World Technologies, Inc., under a trademark
license from RIDGID, Inc. This means that either Ridgid has setup a shell corp for the new tool line or somebody else has done the tool investment and now pays a fee for Ridgid's name and distribution program.

Introducing a new line of power hand tools has to be a very expensive undertaking. In this highly competitive world of consumer and professional power tools, it makes a lot of sense to license the builders of the better grades of products to build the new line with small modifications to the shell. You get years of R&D expertise along with a ready made stream of spare parts.

The strategy for this process has been well established by Sears over the years. They have a good number of their Craftsman tools built for them by Ryobi.

What will matter, in the end, is whether the tools perform as marketed and whether the company backs-up their product if something goes wrong.

Chris